Meet Sarah Stealey: iContact SVP of Customer Support

Written By:James Wong, iContact Marketing Communications Manager

Sarah L. Stealey is currently the senior vice-president of customer support for iContact Corporation in Morrisville, NC. She is responsible for all strategic aspects of the 70-person support department, including operational performance within the department, and for the extensive user base’s customer experience.

Most recently she was based in Los Angeles and the Philippines, as the managing director of technology and telecommunications for PeopleSupport, a leading provider of offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) services. Sarah was responsible for developing and guiding PeopleSupport’s Tech and Telecom industry domain approach, creating process expertise for the vertical, and delivering high-performance BPO services to software, Internet, VoIP and other similar clients.

Prior to PeopleSupport, Sarah handled operations and vendor relations for fulfillment, contact centers, e-commerce and back-office through her positions as the manager of direct marketing operations for MGM Studios and marketing operations manager for American Television Time.

Sarah is a COPC Registered Coordinator and earned her MBA in global business from Pepperdine University. Sarah also holds a bachelor of arts in both journalism and public relations from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

As SVP of customer support, Sarah is closely involved with her department, the organization and the community. We are pleased to announce that in 2011, Sarah has been honored as one of the Triangle Business Journal’s (TBJ) “40 Under 40” leaders and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) “Woman of the Year.” In addition, the iContact Support team recently won ICMI’s “Global Call Center of the Year” for small- to medium-sized contact centers. Get to know Sarah a little better in the following interview questions.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you are from and how you found your way to the Triangle area.

I am originally from a very small farming town in the north-central part of Wisconsin. While fabulous to grow up in, it just wasn’t for me long-term. My mom says I started talking about moving to a big city when I was probably in third grade. I still love going back to visit, though, as that is where my parents and my two brothers and two sisters and their families all live. I found my way to the Triangle through a very divergent route – I moved to Madison for my undergraduate, then to Austin after graduation, fled the heat for a job with MGM Studios in LA, earned my master’s degree, traveled the world for work, and then found myself living two separate and exhausting lives between the Philippines and LA. The year I racked up 250,000 flown miles caused me to look for a different pace of life, and I packed up all my things and moved to Raleigh. I live in a restored 100-year-old house in downtown, so I still have that urban city life … just at a better balance.

You have been working at iContact since 2008. What are some of your most notable accomplishments?

Where to start? We have accomplished so much in the past three years! When I arrived here, this was a fledgling department that was trying hard, but didn’t have the right direction. Our success is now evident everywhere … by reading our CSAT comments, seeing the upward trends in our metrics, listening to agents as they troubleshoot with customers, hearing managers coach their teams and thoroughly understanding the impact we have on the overall customer experience. I love that we’ve managed to effectively integrate our company core values into customer support. We’ve also built out multiple tiers of support so that our customers have a clear path for assistance and escalation if necessary. It is no small feat to be a “high-performing” center, and we’ve proven that it can be done! Recently our team won the ICMI’s “Call Center of the Year” for 2011, and that was really a culmination of our years of hard work.

So far 2011 has been an exciting year for you. What are you looking forward to in the future?

I’m looking forward to implementing new ways to improve the customer and the employee experience. We are planning to launch some exciting things with mobile support, social, CSAT and WOWME, and build out more engaging online customer tools. Our motto is to WOW the customer, and you’ll see much more of it in the upcoming months. We understand that it takes happy team members to make happy customers, so we’re focusing as much energy internally as we are outward.

How did you feel when you found out you were named one of TBJ’s “40 Under 40”?

It was a tremendous honor to be recognized by the community. It was initially a little difficult to move into a new city where I didn’t have the broad network of resources that I was used to. An award like the TBJ “40 Under 40” creates new opportunities to meet people from other industries. It’s also a testament that the great work we are doing here at iContact is being noticed.

What made you decide to run for the LLS “Woman of the Year” campaign?

I had been looking for some new charity and community outreach events to participate in, and two of our colleagues suggested that this would be a worthwhile organization to commit my time to. My paternal grandfather had leukemia and my maternal grandmother died from breast cancer, so there was an immediate personal connection. Very recently I also lost my only uncle to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. I thought that this was a very powerful fundraising opportunity that could unite iContact, and all of my family and friends, together for one purpose. It doesn’t hurt that I am also highly competitive and was committed to win! I enjoyed working with the LLS so much that I have decided to accept their invitation to chair the Nomination Committee for next year.

You sponsored Josh, a 7-year-old survivor of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, as a part of the LLS Woman of the Year award. Can you tell us more about him and what you learned from him?

Josh and his family are incredibly resilient people who have managed to take this situation and turn it into an opportunity to convert the community and their loved ones into a powerful support network. While they are all amazingly vibrant, Josh is unlike anyone you have ever met! He is strong, funny, caring, emotional, energetic … and absolutely charismatic. He will do great things. In all honesty, he would be a powerhouse without this disease, but his diagnosis will probably make him uniquely empathetic and passionate. I want to stay aware of his progress and will absolutely do what I can to continue sponsoring him in this fight. I know that my life has forever been changed by knowing him and his family.

How have these awards affected your life?

This trio of recognition over the past couple of months has simply made me more committed to iContact, our customers and my incredible customer support team. I am honored, yet ready to keep driving us forward to bigger and better things! It goes without saying that I am immensely humbled with the acknowledgments, as one person alone doesn’t generate success. I have a great company, patient friends and family, and a rockstar team around me!

What is your favorite part about being the SVP at iContact?

The ability to interact with my team every day and help motivate them to do better by themselves and our customers. One needs to take this seriously, yet have a great time along the way. We in Support are always looking to perfect that balance.